A History of the Reformation Volume I Part 2

Castile had grown by almost continuous conquest of lands from the Moslems, and these additions were acquired in many ways. If they had been made in what may be termed a national war, the lands seized became the property of the king, and could be retained by him or granted to his lords spiritual and temporal under varying conditions. In some cases these grants made the possessors almost independent princes. On the other hand, lands might be wrested from the aliens by private adventurers, and in such cases they remained in possession of the conquerors, who formed munic.i.p.alities which had the right of choosing and of changing their overlords, and really formed independent communities. Then there were, as was natural in a period of continuous warfare, waste lands. These became the property of those who settled on them. Lastly, there were the dangerous frontier lands, which it was the policy of king or great lord who owned them to people with settlers, who could only be induced to undertake the perilous occupation provided they received charters (_fueros_), which guaranteed their practical independence. In such a condition of things the central authority could not be strong. It was further weakened by the fact that the great feudatories claimed to have both civil administration and military rule over their lands, and a.s.sumed an almost regal state.

Military religious orders abounded, and were possessed of great wealth.

Their Grand Masters, in virtue of their office, were independent military commanders, and had great gifts, in the shape of rich commandries, to bestow on their followers. Their power overshadowed that of the sovereign.

The great ecclesiastics, powerful feudal lords in virtue of their lands, claimed the rights of civil administration and military rule like their lay compeers, and, being personally protected by the indefinable sanct.i.ty of the priestly character, were even more turbulent. Almost universal anarchy had prevailed during the reigns of the two weak kings who preceded Isabella on the throne of Castile, and the crown lands, the support and special protection of the sovereign, had been alienated by lavish gifts to the great n.o.bles. This was the situation which faced the young queen when she came into her inheritance. It was aggravated by a rebellion on behalf of Juanna, the illegitimate daughter of Henry IV. The rebellion was successfully crushed. The queen and her consort, who was not yet in possession of the throne of Aragon, then tried to give the land security.

The previous anarchy had produced its usual results. The country was infested with bands of brigands, and life was not safe outside the walls of the towns. Isabella inst.i.tuted, or rather revived, the Holy Brotherhood (_Hermandad_), a force of cavalry raised by the whole country (each group of one hundred houses was bound to provide one horseman). It was an army of mounted police. It had its own judges, who tried criminals on the scene of their crimes, and those convicted were punished by the troops according to the sentences p.r.o.nounced. Its avowed objects were to put down all crimes of violence committed outside the cities, and to hunt criminals who had fled from the towns' justice. Its judges superseded the justiciary powers of the n.o.bles, who protested in vain. The Brotherhood did its work very effectively, and the towns and the common people rallied round the monarchy which had given them safety for limb and property.

The sovereigns next attacked the position of the n.o.bles, whose mutual feuds rendered them a comparatively easy foe to rulers who had proved their strength of government. The royal domains, which had been alienated during the previous reign, were restored to the sovereign, and many of the most abused privileges of the n.o.bility were curtailed.

One by one the Grand Masters.h.i.+ps of the Crusading Orders were centred in the person of the Crown, the Pope acquiescing and granting invest.i.ture.

The Church was stripped of some of its superfluous wealth, and the civil powers of the higher ecclesiastics were abolished or curtailed. In the end it may be said that the Spanish clergy were made almost as subservient to the sovereign as were those of France.

The pacification and consolidation of Castile was followed by the conquest of Granada. The Holy Brotherhood served the purpose of a standing army, internal feuds among the Moors aided the Christians, and after a protracted struggle (1481-1492) the city of Granada was taken, and the Moorish rule in the Peninsula ceased. All Spain, save Portugal and Navarre (seized by Ferdinand in 1512), was thus united under Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Sovereigns as they came to be called, and the civil unity increased the desire for religious uniformity. The Jews in Spain were numerous, wealthy, and influential. They had intermarried with many n.o.ble families, and almost controlled the finance of the country. It was resolved to compel them to become Christians, by force if necessary. In 1478 a Bull was obtained from Pope Sixtus IV. establis.h.i.+ng the Inquisition in Spain, it being provided that the inquisitors were to be appointed by the sovereign. The Holy Office in this way became an instrument for establis.h.i.+ng a civil despotism, as well as a means for repressing heresy.

It did its work with a ruthless severity hitherto unexampled. Sixtus himself and some of his successors, moved by repeated complaints, endeavoured to restrain its savage energy; but the Inquisition was too useful an instrument in the hands of a despotic sovereign, and the Popes were forced to allow its proceedings, and to refuse all appeals to Rome against its sentences. It was put in use against the Moorish subjects of the Catholic kings, notwithstanding the terms of the capitulation of Granada, which provided for the exercise of civil and religious liberty.

The result was that, in spite of fierce rebellions, all the Moors, save small groups of families under the special protection of the Crown, had become nominal Christians by 1502, although almost a century had to pa.s.s before the Inquisition had rooted out the last traces of the Moslem faith in the Spanish Peninsula.

The death of Isabella in 1504 roughly dates a formidable rising against this process of repression and consolidation. The severities of the Inquisition, the insistence of Ferdinand to govern personally the lands of his deceased wife, and many local causes led to widespread conspiracies and revolts against his rule. The years between 1504 and 1522 were a period of revolutions and of lawlessness which was ended when Charles V., the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, overcame all resistance and inaugurated a reign of personal despotism which long distinguished the kingdom of Spain. Spanish troubles had something to do with preventing Charles from putting into execution in Germany, as he wished to do, the ban issued at Worms against Martin Luther.

-- 6. Germany and Italy.

Germany and Italy, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had made almost no progress in becoming united and compact nations. The process of national consolidation, which was a feature of the times, displayed itself in these lands in the creation of compact princ.i.p.alities rather than in a great and effective national movement under one sovereign power. It is a commonplace of history to say that the main reason for this was the presence within these two lands of the Pope and the Emperor, the twin powers of the earlier mediaeval ideal of a dual government, at once civil and ecclesiastical. Machiavelli expressed the common idea in his clear and strenuous fas.h.i.+on. He says that the Italians owe it to Rome that they are divided into factions and not united as were Spain and France. The Pope, he explains, who claimed temporal as well as spiritual jurisdiction, though not strong enough to rule all Italy by himself, was powerful enough to prevent any other Italian dynasty from taking his place. Whenever he saw any Italian power growing strong enough to have a future before it, he invited the aid of some foreign potentate, thus making Italy a prey to continual invasions. The shadowy lords.h.i.+p of the Pope was sufficient, in the opinion of Machiavelli, to prevent any real lords.h.i.+p under a native dynasty within the Italian peninsula. In Germany there was a similar impotency. The German king was the Emperor, the mediaeval head of the Holy Roman Empire, the "king of the Romans." Some idea of what underlay the thought and its expression may be had when one reads across Albert Durer's portrait of Maximilian, "Imperator Caesar Divus Maximilia.n.u.s Pius Felix Augustus," just as if he had been Trajan or Constantine. The phrase carries us back to the times when the Teutonic tribes swept down on the Roman possessions in Western Europe and took possession of them. They were barbarians with an unalterable reverence for the wider civilisation of the great Empire which they had conquered. They crept into the sh.e.l.l of the great Empire and tried to a.s.similate its jurisprudence and its religion.

Hence it came to pa.s.s, in the earlier Middle Ages, as Mr. Freeman says, "The two great powers in Western Europe were the Church and the Empire, and the centre of each, in imagination at least, was Rome. Both of these went on through the settlements of the German nations, and both in a manner drew new powers from the change of things. Men believed more than ever that Rome was the lawful and natural centre of the world. For it was held that there were of divine right two Vicars of G.o.d upon earth, the Roman Emperor, His Vicar in temporal things, and the Roman Bishop, His Vicar in spiritual things. This belief did not interfere with the existence either of separate commonwealths, princ.i.p.alities, or of national Churches. But it was held that the Roman Emperor, who was the Lord of the World, was of right the head of all temporal States, and the Roman Bishop, the Pope, was the head of all the Churches." This idea was a devout imagination, and was never actually and fully expressed in fact. No Eastern nation or Church ever agreed with it; and the temporal lords.h.i.+p of the Emperors was never completely acknowledged even in the West. Still it ruled in men's minds with all the force of an ideal. As the modern nations of Europe came gradually into being, the real heads.h.i.+p of the Emperor became more and more shadowy. But both heads.h.i.+ps could prevent the national consolidation of the countries, Germany and Italy, in which the possessors dwelt. All this is, as has been said, a commonplace of history, and, like all commonplaces, it contains a great deal of truth. Still it may be questioned whether the mediaeval idea was solely responsible for the disintegration of either Germany or Italy in the sixteenth century. A careful study of the conditions of things in both countries makes us see that many causes were at work besides the mediaeval idea-conditions geographical, social, and historical. Whatever the causes, the disintegration of these two lands was in marked contrast to the consolidation of the three other nations.

-- 7. Italy.

In the end of the fifteenth century, Italy contained a very great number of petty princ.i.p.alities and five States which might be called the great powers of Italy-Venice, Milan, and Florence in the north, Naples in the south, and the States of the Church in the centre. Peace was kept by a delicate and highly artificial balance of powers. Venice was a commercial republic, ruled by an oligarchy of n.o.bles. The city in the lagoons had been founded by trembling fugitives fleeing before Attila's Huns, and was more than a thousand years old. It had large territories on the mainland of Italy, and colonies extending down the east coast of the Adriatic and among the Greek islands. It had the largest revenue of all the Italian States, but its expenses were also much the heaviest. Milan came next in wealth, with its yearly income of over 700,000 ducats. At the close of the century it was in the possession of the Sforza family, whose founder had been born a ploughman, and had risen to be a formidable commander of mercenary soldiers. It was claimed by Maximilian as a fief of the Empire, and by the Kings of France as a heritage of the Dukes of Orleans. The disputed heritage was one of the causes of the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. Florence, the most cultured city in Italy, was, like Venice, a commercial republic; but it was a democratic republic, wherein one family, the Medici, had usurped almost despotic power while preserving all the external marks of republican rule.

Naples was the portion of Italy where the feudal system of the Middle Ages had lingered longest. The old kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) had, since 1458, been divided, and Sicily had been politically separated from the mainland. The island belonged to the King of Aragon; while the mainland had for its ruler the illegitimate son of Alphonso of Aragon, Ferdinand, or Ferrante, who proved a despotic and masterful ruler.

He had crushed his semi-independent feudal barons, had brought the towns under his despotic rule, and was able to hand over a compact kingdom to his son Alphonso in 1494.

The feature, however, in the political condition of Italy which ill.u.s.trated best the general tendency of the age towards coalescence, was the growth of the States of the Church. The dominions which were directly under the temporal power of the Pope had been the most disorganised in all Italy. The va.s.sal barons had been turbulently independent, and the Popes had little power even within the city of Rome. The helplessness of the Popes to control their va.s.sals perhaps reached its lowest stage in the days of Innocent VIII. His successors Alexander VI. (Rodrigo Borgia, 1492-1503), Julius II. (Cardinal della Rovere, 1503-1513), and Leo X.

(Giovanni de Medici, 1513-1521), strove to create, and partly succeeded in forming, a strong central dominion, the States of the Church. The troubled times of the French invasions, and the continual warfare among the more powerful States of Italy, furnished them with the occasion. They pursued their policy with a craft which brushed aside all moral obligations, and with a ruthlessness which hesitated at no amount of bloodshed. In their hands the Papacy appeared to be a merely temporal power, and was treated as such by contemporary politicians. It was one of the political States of Italy, and the Popes were distinguished from their contemporary Italian rulers only by the facts that their spiritual position enabled them to exercise a European influence which the others could not aspire to, and that their sacred character placed them above the obligations of ordinary morality in the matter of keeping solemn promises and maintaining treaty obligations made binding by the most sacred oaths. In one sense their aim was patriotic. They were Italian princes whose aim was to create a strong Italian central power which might be able to maintain the independence of Italy against the foreigner; and in this they were partially successful, whatever judgment may require to be pa.s.sed on the means taken to attain their end. But the actions of the Italian prince placed the spiritual Head of the Church outside all those influences, intellectual, artistic, and religious (the revival under Savonarola in Florence), which were working in Italy for the regeneration of European society. The Popes of the Renaissance set the example, only too faithfully followed by almost every prince of the age, of believing that political far outweighed all moral and religious motives.

-- 8. Germany.

Germany, or the Empire, as it was called, included, in the days of the Reformation, the Low Countries in the north-west and most of what are now the Austro-Hungarian lands in the east. It was in a strange condition. On the one hand a strong popular sentiment for unity had arisen in all the German-speaking portions, and on the other the country was cut into sections and slices, and was more hopelessly divided than was Italy itself.

Nominally the Empire was ruled over by one supreme lord, with a great feudal a.s.sembly, the Diet, under him.

The Empire was elective, though for generations the rulers chosen had always been the heads of the House of Hapsburg, and since 1356 the election had been in the hands of seven prince-electors-three on the Elbe and four on the Rhine. On the Elbe were the King of Bohemia, the Elector of Saxony, and the Elector of Brandenburg; on the Rhine, the Count Palatine of the Rhine and the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Koln.

This Empire, nominally one, and full of the strongest sentiments of unity, was hopelessly divided, and-for this was the peculiarity of the situation-all the elements making for peaceful government, which in countries like France or England supported the central power, were on the side of disunion.

A glance at the map of Germany in the times of the Reformation shows an astonis.h.i.+ng multiplicity of separate princ.i.p.alities, ecclesiastical and secular, all the more bewildering that most of them appeared to be composed of patches lying separate from each other. Almost every ruling prince had to cross some neighbour's land to visit the outlying portions of his dominions. It must also be remembered that the divisions which can be represented on a map but faintly express the real state of things. The territories of the imperial cities-the lands outside the walls ruled by the civic fathers-were for the most part too small to figure on any map, and for the same reason the tiny princ.i.p.alities of the hordes of free n.o.bles are also invisible. So we have to imagine all those little mediaeval republics and those infinitesimal kingdoms camped on the territories of the great princes, and taking from them even the small amount of unity which the map shows.

The greater feudal States, Electoral and Ducal Saxony, Brandenburg, Bavaria, the Palatinate, Hesse, and many others, had meetings of their own Estates,-Councils of subservient n.o.bles and lawyers,-their own Supreme Courts of Justice, from which there was no appeal, their own fiscal system, their own finance and coinage, and largely controlled their clergy and their relations to powers outside Germany. Their princes, hampered as they were by the great Churchmen, thwarted continually by the town republics, defied by the free n.o.bles, were nevertheless actual kings, and profited by the centralising tendencies of the times. They alone in Germany represented settled central government, and attracted to themselves the smaller units lying outside and around them.

Yet with all these divisions, having their roots deep down in the past, there was pervading all cla.s.ses of society, from princes to peasants, the sentiment of a united Germany, and no lack of schemes to convert the feeling into fact. The earliest practical attempts began with the union of German Churchmen at Constance and the scheme for a National Church of Germany; and the dream of ecclesiastical unity brought in its train the aspiration after political oneness.

The practical means proposed to create a German national unity over lands which stretched from the Straits of Dover to the Vistula, and from the Baltic to the Adriatic, were the proclamation of a universal Land's Peace, forbidding all internecine war between Germans; the establishment of a Supreme Court of Justice to decide quarrels within the Empire; a common coinage, and a common Customs Union. To bind all more firmly together there was needed a Common Council or governing body, which, under the Emperor, should determine the Home and Foreign Policy of the Empire. The only authorities which could create a governmental unity of this kind were the Emperor on the one hand and the great princes on the other, and the two needed to be one in mutual confidence and in intention. But that is what never happened, and all through the reign of Maximilian and in the early years of Charles we find two different conceptions of what the central government ought to be-the one oligarchic and the other autocratic. The princes were resolved to keep their independence, and their plans for unity always implied a governing oligarchy with serious restraint placed on the power of the Emperor; while the Emperors, who would never submit to be controlled by an oligarchy of German princes, and who found that they could not carry out their schemes for an autocratic unity, were at least able to wreck any other.

The German princes have been accused of preferring the security and enlargement of their dynastic possessions to the unity of the Empire, but it can be replied that in doing so they only followed the example set them by their Emperors. Frederick III., Maximilian, and Charles V. invariably neglected imperial interests when they clashed with the welfare of the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg. When Maximilian inherited the imperial Burgundian lands, a fief of the Empire, through his marriage with Mary, the heiress of Charles the Bold, he treated the inheritance as part of the family estates of his House. The Tyrol was absorbed by the House of Hapsburg when the Swabian League prevented Bavaria seizing it (1487). The same fate fell on the Duchy of Austria when Vienna was recovered, and on Hungary and Bohemia; and when Charles V. got hold of Wurtemberg on the outlawry of Duke Ulrich, it, too, was detached from the Empire and absorbed into the family possessions of the Hapsburgs. There was, in short, a persistent policy pursued by three successive Emperors, of despoiling the Empire in order to increase the family possessions of the House to which they belonged.

The last attempt to give a const.i.tutional unity to the German Empire was made at the Diet of Worms (1521)-the Diet before which Luther appeared.

There the Emperor, Charles V., agreed to accept a _Reichsregiment_, which was in all essential points, though differing in some details, the same as his grandfather Maximilian had proposed to the Diet of 1495. The Central Council was composed of a President and four members appointed by the Emperor, six Electors (the King of Bohemia being excluded), who might sit in person or by deputies, and twelve members appointed by the rest of the Estates. The cities were not represented. This _Reichsregiment_ was to govern all German lands, including Austria and the Netherlands, but excluding Bohemia. Switzerland, hitherto nominally within the Empire, formally withdrew and ceased to form part of Germany. The central government needed funds to carry on its work, and especially to provide an army to enforce its decisions; and various schemes for raising the money required were discussed at its earlier meetings. It was resolved at last to raise the necessary funds by imposing a tax of four per cent. on all imports and exports, and to establish custom-houses on all the frontiers.

The practical effect of this was to lay the whole burden of taxation upon the mercantile cla.s.ses, or, in other words, to make the cities, who were not represented in the _Reichsregiment_, pay for the whole of the central government. This _Reichsregiment_ was to be simply a board of advice, without any decisive control so long as the Emperor was in Germany. When he was absent from the country it had an independent power of government.

But all important decisions had to be confirmed by the absent Emperor, who, for his part, promised to form no foreign leagues involving Germany without the consent of the Council.

As soon as the _Reichsregiment_ had settled its scheme of taxation, the cities on which it was proposed to lay the whole burden of providing the funds required very naturally objected. They met by representatives at Speyer (1523), and sent delegates to Spain, to Valladolid, where Charles happened to be, to protest against the scheme of taxation. They were supported by the great German capitalists. The Emperor received them graciously, and promised to take the government into his own hands. In this way the last attempt to give a governmental unity to Germany was destroyed by the joint action of the Emperor and of the cities. It is unquestionable that the Reformation under Luther did seriously a.s.sist in the disintegration of Germany, but it must be remembered that a movement cannot become national where there is no nation, and that German nationality had been hopelessly destroyed just at the time when it was most needed to unify and moderate the great religious impulses which were throbbing in the hearts of its citizens.

Maximilian had been elected King of the Romans in 1486, and had succeeded to the Empire on the death of his father, Frederick III., in 1493. His was a strongly fascinating personality-a man full of enthusiasms, never lacking in ideas, but singularly dest.i.tute of the patient practical power to make them workable. He may almost be called a type of that Germany over which he was called to rule. No man was fuller of the longing for German unity as an ideal; no man did more to perpetuate the very real divisions of the land.

He was the patron of German learning and of German art, and won the praises of the German Humanists: no ruler was more celebrated in contemporary song. He protected and supported the German towns, encouraged their industries, and fostered their culture. In almost everything ideal he stood for German nationality and unity. He placed himself at the head of all those intellectual and artistic forces from which spread the thought of a united Germany for the Germans. On the other hand, his one persistent practical policy, and the only one in which he was almost uniformly successful, was to unify and consolidate the family possessions of the House of Hapsburg. In this policy he was the leader of those who broke up Germany into an aggregate of separate and independent princ.i.p.alities. The greater German princes followed his example, and did their best to transform themselves into the civilised rulers of modern States.

Maximilian died somewhat unexpectedly on January 12th, 1519, and five months were spent in intrigues by the partisans of Francis of France and young Charles, King of Spain, the grandson of Maximilian. The French party believed that they had secured by bribery a majority of the Electors; and when this was whispered about, the popular feeling in favour of Charles, on account of his German blood, soon began to manifest itself. It was naturally strongest in the Rhine provinces. Papal delegates could not get the Rhine skippers to hire boats to them for their journey, as it was believed that the Pope favoured the French king. The Imperial Cities accused Francis of fomenting internecine war in Germany, and displayed their hatred of his candidature. The very Landsknechten clamoured for the grandson of their "Father" Maximilian. The eyes of all Germany were turned anxiously enough to the venerable town of Frankfurt-on-the-Main, where, according to ancient usage, the Electors met to select the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. On the 28th of June (1519) the alarm bell of the town gave the signal, and the Electors a.s.sembled in their scarlet robes of State in the dim little chapel of St. Bartholomew, where the conclave was always held. The manifestation of popular feeling had done its work.

Charles was unanimously chosen, and all Germany rejoiced,-the good burghers of Frankfurt declaring that if the Electors had chosen Francis they would have been "playing with death."

It was a wave of national excitement, the desire for a _German_ ruler, that had brought about the unanimous election; and never were a people more mistaken and, in the end, disappointed. Charles was the heir of the House of Hapsburg, the grandson of Maximilian, his veins full of German blood. But he was no German. Maximilian was the last of the real German Hapsburgs. History scarcely shows another instance where the mother's blood has so completely changed the character of a race. Charles was his mother's son, and her Spanish characteristics showed themselves in him in greater strength as the years went on. When he abdicated, he retired to end his days in a Spanish convent. It was the Spaniard, not the German, who faced Luther at Worms.

Chapter III. The Renaissance.(16)

-- 1. The Transition from the Mediaeval to the Modern World.

The movement called the Renaissance, in its widest extent, may be described as the transition from the mediaeval to the modern world. All our present conceptions of life and thought find their roots within this period.

It saw the beginnings of modern science and the application of true scientific methods to the investigation of nature. It witnessed the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, the foundation of anatomy under Vessalius, and the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey.

It was the age of geographical explorations. The discoveries of the telescope, the mariner's compa.s.s, and gunpowder gave men mastery over previously unknown natural forces, and multiplied their powers, their daring, and their capacities for adventure. When these geographical discoveries had made a world-trade a possible thing, there began that change from mediaeval to modern methods in trade and commerce which lasted from the close of the fourteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the modern commercial conditions were thoroughly established. The transition period was marked by the widening area of trade, which was no longer restricted to the Mediterranean, the Black and the North Seas, to the Baltic, and to the east coasts of Africa. The rigid groups of artisans and traders-the guild system of the Middle Ages-began to dissolve, and to leave freer s.p.a.ce for individual and new corporate effort. Prices were gradually freed from official regulation, and became subject to the natural effects of bargaining. Adventure companies were started to share in the world-trade, and a beginning was made of dealing on commissions. All these changes belong to the period of transition between the mediaeval and the modern world.

In the art of governing men the Renaissance was the age of political concentration. In two realms-Germany and Italy-the mediaeval conceptions of Emperor and Pope, world-king and world-priest, were still strong enough to prevent the union of national forces under one political head; but there, also, the principle of coalescence may be found in partial operation,-in Germany in the formation of great independent princ.i.p.alities, and in Italy in the growth of the States of the Church,-and its partial failure subjected both nationalities to foreign oppression. Everywhere there was the attempt to a.s.sert the claims of the secular powers to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from clerical tutelage and ecclesiastical usurpation. While, underlying all, there was the beginning of the a.s.sertion of the supreme right of individual revolt against every custom, law, or theory which would subordinate the man to the caste or cla.s.s. The Swiss peasantry began it when they made pikes by tying their scythes to their alpenstocks, and, standing shoulder to shoulder at Morgarten and Sempach, broke the fiercest charges of mediaeval knighthood. They proved that man for man the peasant was as good as the n.o.ble, and individual manhood a.s.serted in this rude and bodily fas.h.i.+on soon began to express itself mentally and morally.

In jurisprudence the Renaissance may be described as the introduction of historical and scientific methods, the abandonment of legal fictions based upon collections of false decretals, the recovery of the true text of the Roman code, and the subst.i.tution of civil for canon law as the basis of legislation and government. There was a complete break with the past. The subst.i.tution of civil law based upon the lawbooks of Justinian for the canon law founded upon the Decretum of Gratian, involved such a breach in continuity that it was the most momentous of all the changes of that period of transition. For law enters into every human relation, and a thorough change of legal principles must involve a revolution which is none the less real that it works almost silently. The codes of Justinian and of Theodosius completely reversed the teachings of the canonists, and the civilian lawyers learned to look upon the Church as only a department of the State.

In literature there was the discovery of cla.s.sical ma.n.u.scripts, the introduction of the study of Greek, the perception of the beauties of language in the choice and arrangement of words under the guidance of cla.s.sical models. The literary powers of modern languages were also discovered,-Italian, English, French, and German,-and with the discovery the national literatures of Europe came into being.